Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Firmafest writes "In USA Today there's a scoop that American Airlines will offer Wi-Fi on domestic flights. Price is approx. $10 to get connected. Being a frequent international flyer I hope this will catch on. The LA Times reports that the cost is about $100,000 to equip a plane. While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it. If I had a choice between two flights both equally good, I'd pick the Wi-Fi enabled one." The article also says that JetBlue and Southwest Airlines are at least experimenting with Wi-Fi access aboard, while Delta already offers it.

If it pays for itself within a few months, then good. Profitable airlines == more competition, and less nickel and diming for snacks and hydration.

Secretly funded by the NSA actually. A capture will be built into the system.

So then I work off of my laptop with restrictive iptables running and SSH to my server which I log into using port knocking and watch videos on Youtube via tunnel. Or I let the NSA know that I enjoy watching the cat flushing the toilet video ten times in a row.

Between the TSA frisking a grandmother and airlines denying people access for wearing T-Shirts with Arabic lettering I have stopped expecting a high amount of privacy on a plane.

A. L4t3r4lu5 (GGGGP)B. Spazztastic (GGGP)C. interkin3tic (GGP)D. Anonymous Coward (GP)E. rwa2 (P)F. interkin3tic (current post)G. the next guy to respondH. All of the above except for C and F, because interkin3tic never misses the jokeI. None of the above

Most long-haul flights are available overnight, these planes tend to spend 20+ hours a day in the air so even on the longest routes they'll have 2 flights every 3 days. Anything in the 8-10 hours range is almost definitely doing two flights a day.

Commuter planes tend to be in service from 6-7am through 10-11pm, and so 5-9 flights per day seems to be about typical, although some routes will be higher.

Turning off electronics has never been about interfereance with the plane, if that were the case you wouldn't be allowed to bring items onboard at all.

Consider this: Your electronics are just as electromagnetically dangerous left switched on in your pocket as they are in your hand and all the airlines verify is that you're not holding any electronics, not that they're turned off.

Not sure why this article is 'news', its been tried before and even Boeing could not make it cost effective even when dealing with new-build aircraft (no retrofitting needed, lower costs than dealing with airframes that have already come off the production line) - the service was discontinued at the end of 2006.

Interestingly enough, Connexion was a partnership between Boeing, American, United and Delta airlines. I wonder what has changed...

Add a 1 to 3% fuel burn penalty for the life of that aircraft and recalculate. Satellite based internet requires a relatively large antenna that bulges off the top of the fuselage. Not aerodynamic, not green, not cheap, and not efficient. Not sure what if any fuel burn penalty there is for cellular based internet antennas.

Backelin said the Internet access will be filtered to block pornographic sites -- the airline at first said it wouldn't do that, but relented after hearing complaints from customers and flight attendants. And American won't allow voice-over-Internet phone service, to keep chattering to a minimum.

Hm... is there a ban on pornographic DVDs or the watching of one on a flight? I'm sure if you started watching one on a flight, you would be prosecuted somehow so why is Internet being singled out for pre-emptive censorship?

Because there's a difference between you bringing porn on the plane and the airline making it available to you. In both you might be prosecuted, but only in one can they be sued for sexual harassment or contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

I don't fly often, but I'm going to start watching the sky for falling AA planes. With all the radio waves in planes introduced by offering wifi, there's no way the planes won't crash. At least, that's what the FAA has been telling us for as long as I can remember. Now that there's a way to make money from using radio devices in the cabin, there doesn't seem to be a problem anymore.

I think there is a ban for other reasons. Another legitimate reason I heard is about cell-phone jumping around the cell-tower because all cell grid looks similarity poor, almost the same SNR from 30000 feet, and the cell phone and network will go crazy in switching.

When did your computer crash last time when your cell phone rings right next to it? None for me.I know airplane has a lot more analog device, but with Wifi, which its active transmission power is like hundreds time smaller than the cell, and bein

I don't recall the FAA ever saying that electronic devices WILL cause a crash, only that the planes have not been certified with the devices. So, if you have not done the certification testing (expensive), the prudent thing to do is say don't use the devices. Since, as you pointed out, they can make money on it now, it makes sense to spend the money on the certifications and allow some devices.

Also, while the FAA is concerned about cell phones for the same reason as above, the FCC is more concerned. Having thousands of cell phones hop from tower to tower at 500 MPH is not something the system was designed to do.

The ban on electronics in flight preexsits cell phones (late 1980's). So, while cell hopping is a real problem for the phone company, it's not the cause of the ban. The ban is simpley because they have know idea what you might be bringing aboard, so they blanket forbid everything.

We have found that if you go to the pilot and discover (s)he is a ham, you can usually get permission to operate a 2m rig.

I strongly suspect that "no RF devices on the plane" is, in many respects, very similar to "no metal in the microwave". That is, not actually all that true, there are loads and loads of exceptions; but the exceptions can be complex enough that it isn't worth the trouble of attempting to explain them.

"Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules prohibit the use of cellular phones using the 800 MHz frequency and other wireless devices on airborne aircraft. This ban was put in place because of potential interference to wireless networks on the ground. "

I fly GA aircraft and I've left my phone on before. Granted I'm not at 30K feet but I have gotten interference with my headset. It's an iPhone 3G and I think it switched over to EDGE. I was getting the typical EDGE pulse noise like you get on any speakers. So yes there is some issue with cell phones, especially when they drop to EDGE which the 3G ones usually do when they can't get 3G.

People are not that close to the cabin in commercial jets so the problem is less severe than what I was getting.

They tested an old busted up plane (IIRC they installed the instruments themselves even) and by turning the cellphone output up way high they were able to have some effect.Then they tested a real plane and even ramping up the signal to max they were able to have no effect. At all.

The conclusion at the end had more to do with not getting in trouble with the FAA than the actual results.

Well, exactly. However, the FAA and the airlines have claimed for years that running personal electronic devices in the passenger compartment causes instrument failure in the cockpit.

That is not the claim. Were it so, it would be trivial to disprove for a specific case.

The claim is that it CAN cause interference, and yes, it can. Not every time. Not with every electronic device. I'm a pilot and I've seen it happen. But trying to figure out why there is interference and where it is coming from is enough o

That was a VOR they used. Mythbuster's test was completely invalid. All pilots/engineers who watched that test were banging their head on their remotes with frustration. Also, at the end of the show even the Mythbusters mention their errors were brought to their attention and point out their test may not have been accurate because their VOR WAS BROKEN IN THE FIRST PLACE.

The simple fact is, hundreds, if not thousands of planes fly every day with cell phones turned on. The truth of the matter is, cell phones in flight place a higher demand on a carrier's network. This has always been a political issue and has never been a safety issue.

Lastly, AFAIK, there has never been been a substantiated claim a cell phone interfered with the safe operation of a plane in flight. Furthermore, all of the reports which received significant news coverage were later determined to have absolutely nothing to do with passenger electronic devices.

And neither of those planes have enough room in them to easily use a laptop other than in first class, of which there are about 16 seats. Not to mention no power adapters so half way through your flight you're done anyway. Sounds great on paper. Practicality wise it will fail just like all the previous attempts have. Just saying, if they are doing their rate of return simply by the number of people with laptops and some poll I think they are being a bit overzealous. Payback will be much longer than they thi

And neither of those planes have enough room in them to easily use a laptop other than in first class, of which there are about 16 seats.

I travel "those planes" on a regular basis. When I walk back to the restroom in coach, I find that 1/3rd to 1/2 of the passengers are either working or watching a DVD on their laptop.

Not to mention no power adapters so half way through your flight you're done anyway.

AA has power at selected seats. I almost always sit in the exit row, which does have power. In the rest of the "prime seats" (used by business travelers), I find that approximately every other row has power. If it isn't your row, it isn't difficult to negotiate with the row in front of you to let you use their power out

My guess is that one reason it costs $100k per plane to install this system is that part of the installation is doing the tests to insure that 802.11 doesn't interfere with any of the plane's systems.

I had a cross country flight a few years back with some friends. We created an ad-hoc network and played Worms World Party [wikipedia.org] for about half of the flight. Amazingly enough the airplane didn't crash.....

What good is WiFi when most of the flights I fly on don't give me anything to plug my laptop in to anyways? I'd even consider paying a few dollars for electric service on a flight so I could plug in and use my laptop for the duration of the flight. As it is, my laptop run time on flights is strictly limited to the charge on my batteries before I get on the plane.

And if I'm going to use my latop with WiFi on, that would only drain by battery slightly quicker than without it.

What do you consider normal? I have an HP notebook with 12" screen. With the 9-cell battery I can go 8 hours easily with wifi on doing work in Eclipse and running some server software. It's a standard Core2 system, not an Atom-based netbook. There are some laptops out there with great battery life. I realize most companies give developers more powerful laptops with bigger screens. But if you travel a lot it's worth having a lighter, smaller laptop with twice the battery life.

I just flew AA and they charged me $40 for two suitcases. $15 for the first and $25 for the second. I understand what they're trying to do here but the problem is that their flights show up as cheaper on search results. You can think of it as a $40 discount if you don't have any checked baggage or a $25 discount if you only have one checked bag....but the searches should reflect that.

Unless I'm moving I'll never need 2 checked-bags. I'd be shocked if I needed one. The max bag size for carry-on (you are allowed 2) Should be fine for 2weeks of travel (I go somewhere with 1 and return with 2 usually)

I flew US Airways. I got charged $15 for my checked bag. I also have a laptop bag which can go under the seat, and a backpack which takes up very little room in the overhead.

Several people each flight brought two large bags that each took up over half of an overhead bin, and then argued with the flight attendants for 5-10 minutes about how they should be allowed to bring as much as they want on the plane. This held up my flights for several minutes each, that WOULD have left a few minutes

I understand that historically bundled services are replaced with fees that it is upsetting, however I really have enjoyed knowing that when you load up to 100lbs (50lbs weight limit per bag) that it is paid for while I carry on my only luggage (which I have done for up to 7 day trips easily).

Since I have yet to see an airline that weighs carry-on luggage, I can see why you would like this policy. The only real criteria for the carry-on is that you must be able to fit it in an overhead bin and be able to lift it there.

Flying now, it is quite obvious there is a lot more carry-on luggage, and much of it is often at the very limit of size to fit in the overhead bins (with no hope of fitting under a seat). Basically, people have just stopped checking luggage because it costs more, but the airplane

Exactly. I flew yesterday, and only due to the potential charge did I carry on my bag. My laptop bag was packed to the gills also. So many people did this exact same thing that 9 or 10 of them had to check their carry on because there was no more room anywhere on the plane. The lack of space was verified by the flight attendants stalking the aisles for about 45 minutes re-arranging bags in the overhead bins.

I spent 1.5 hours boarding a flight that was in the air for 1.5 hours.

The policy may not seem self defeating to the execs, but I will not be a return customer on airlines that force this type of behavior.

First one is simple just put it in the agreement when you buy service.
Second is also most likely forbidden in the agreement.
Third one is probably going to happen at some point but it could also be used to twitter or IM "flight 717 has been hijacked somebody save us!!" albeit the same could happen and it be a prank.

1. Stewardesses will be trained in Krav Maga.2. No (Serious answer; VoIP is blocked)3. The use of electronic equipment during an emergency is strictly prohibited by existing regulations. "Seat backs upright, trays in their upright locked position, bent at waist with head between knees and hands behind head" is hardly the ideal typing position.

How is AA going to prevent me from setting up my Meraki repeater once I'm aboard and start re-selling their service for a lower price?

The fact that if you start hocking your nerdly wares up and down the aisle, someone is going to alert a flight attendant. It's the same reason you don't have people selling you non-internet goods on the airplane.

If you just repeat it to your 2 co-workers no one is going to care, it will just make you look cheap.

Societal pressure will do wonders for stopping shitty behavior in the real world. It works double plus good when everyone has spent at several hundred dollars to enter a confined space. This is why y

Other than the fact that they are expanding the routes on which this is offered, I'm not sure how this is new news. Gogo has been offering service on trans-con American Airlines flights from LA to the east coast for at least 6 months now.

I've used it a few times, and it works OK. Speeds were reasonable (100-150KB download speeds, ping times comparable to mobile broadband, 150-200ms) and I think there was only 1 dead spot for a few minutes during the times that I was logged in. They did not block VPN access so you could conceivably use VoIP once you VPN, but I did not try this.

A link to the actual service (rather than USA today or a blog) would help too:

I was on a Southwest flight that was testing this out about a month ago, where it was free for passengers. I ran speakeasy's speed test on it, http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ [speakeasy.net] , and got about 3000 kbps down, and something like 200 kbps up. I ran the test about five minutes after they announced that we could use the service, and it seemed like more than half the people on the plane had laptops out and were playing with the service, even though none of us knew that the service would be available until we got on the plane.

Despite the airlines' push to keep customers connected while flying, there's one service passengers shouldn't expect soon: cellphone service.
Carriers are reluctant to make cellphone connections available during flights [...] partly to avoid problems between passengers seeking quiet and those talking loudly to be heard above

While I certainly welcome connectivity on the plane, once you offer it, unless you explicitly block Skype, YIM, and others, cellphones are no longer relevant as anyone can use VoIP. Th

Not exactly. Generally, all of the airspace over a territory is within the jurisdiction of that terrority. However, at least in the United States, the federal government has sole jurisdiction over the navigable airways; state jurisdiction does not apply. There's a very interesting blog article about airspace jurisdiction [kentlaw.edu], written about 1 year and half ago on a college legal blog.

I believe the airspace over international waters, is treated exactly like the international waters themselves.

it looks like they're going to block audio and video conferencing, I bet they block bittorrent and anything else that can eat traffic too. 3mbps won't get them very far though if any significant chunk of the plane books time on the net. They're talking about passengers streaming video to watch... can you just imagine 25 passengers trying to stream video at 3mbps?

Better investment by far in that arena is a larger hard drive and load it up with media to watch while you fly. I've got overkill here, the medi

SSH tunnel via port knocking to 443 to a server. Sure, you can't use HTTPS on that box but it gets around most filters.

Actually with a sophisticated enough series of iptables rules you probably could run both HTTPS and SSH. After your port knocking just intercept the packet bound for 443 from the IP that did the port knocking and send it to the SSH server. All others go to the HTTPS server.

Unless your filter decides that no one really needs connections that last more than a 30 seconds over HTTPS. That restriction will break almost no HTTPS sites, but will ensure that any SSH connection dies periodically, as does anything running tunnelled over that connection.

People on a plane will do anything to distract themselves from the cramped space, uncomfortable seats, stale air, stale body odor, and bad food. Including paying out the nose for booze, headphones to listen to a movie, or internet access.

During a intercontinental flight a magazine won't do you much long. If you are a fast reader a standard paperback will be finished long before yo arrive, of corse that is if you are fortunate enough to be able to focus on something for more than 5 minutes at a time due to the annoying brat in seat 36A and the piss drunk idiots in the row behind you. At times like that internet access can be quite a neat thing to have as there are plenty of distractions (from brats and drunk idiots) that require little conce

People on a plane will do anything to distract themselves from the cramped space, uncomfortable seats, stale air, stale body odor, and bad food. Including paying out the nose for booze, headphones to listen to a movie, or internet access.

Psssst. Hey. You...yeah...you. Buddy. You DO realize you just asked that question on Slashdot. Right? You know? The place where a lot of people go who really like technology and the internet and all that?